Google's Music Streaming Service Is Finally Live In Australia

After a few months jealously waiting for Google to open up its awkwardly-named Play streaming service to Australia, we finally have access to it in Australia and New Zealand starting today! The best news is that you can get the special pricing offer we saw at I/O for yourself right now.

Take a breath, here’s the full name: Google Play Music All Access. Catchy.

All Access is a service that takes the best parts of other music services and blends it together. You can upload 20,000 songs to a digital locker in the cloud to keep and have and hold forever like iTunes Match, you can stream songs from curated radio stations like on Pandora and you can buy stuff to keep forever just like Google Play, ironically.

Right now, everyone gets a 30-day free trial of Google Play Music All Access. Get in there and get your hands (ears?) dirty with some tracks. After that’s expired, Google is offering the same introductory deal that it gave developers access to at this year’s I/O conference: if you sign up to Google Play Music All Access within the next 45 days, you’ll get it for $9.99, rather than the traditional $11.99 that it usually goes for.

Interestingly, despite the fact that the Australian dollar has dipped below parity with the US dollar, Australians still get Google Play Music All Access for the same price: no Australia Tax to speak of.

Google Play Music All Access’ local head, Ruuben Van Den Heuvel, admitted to us yesterday that it’s a little late in coming to Australia, but Google needed that time to curate great content for Australians to enjoy.

“We’re all about local. The service itself is programmed and merchandised specifically for Australia. It’s not a global service, it’s a local service. We have people who are music experts and look at the music in any given week and program it out so that they get the things they hear on radio or find people who are touring to make music life interesting. We have an affinity for Australian artists and we’ve signed the locals to All Access too. Intertia, Liberation, Hilsong, Ministry of Sound, Matt Corby, Flume and Empire of the Sun are all there. We also have the stable of Australian music like Hunters and Collectors and Jimmy Barnes. We’re all about creating a service tailored for Australian people,” Ruuben told us.

Curiously, the programmers that handle the service live in London. Weird.

Pretty sure we're $2 higher than the US in pricing, aren't we? I could have sworn their special offer was $7.99 and then $9.99 once it ended.

Edit: And for some reason I can't even sign up for the trial. It says my card is an unsupported payment method, even though it's the same card that's been tied to my account to buy apps and magazines for the past year and longer. On my phone/tablet, it just comes up saying 'The item you were attempting to purchase could not be found.'

I was able to use the "locker" service yesterday and its great but from what I can tell from your article Luke, there isn't an option to stream individual songs like Spotify or Xbox music....correct me if im wrong ?

Yep, working on my mobile. :D Opened the app first thing this morning and it gave me a little tour on how it all works. Maybe they are slowly pushing it out to different devices if you don't have it? I am using a Nexus 4 so this could explain why I have it and others might not.

I'll give it a try... but the one big failing for all these music services for me has been the songs they lack.. I am into world music and it's, sadly, a niche genre that gets overlooked in these services. Sure.. they have a handful of tracks by what someone must consider to be "popular" artists.. but it is never good enough for the subscription price.

Google Play Music doesn't have Chage & Aska (a Japanese pop duo), but it at least knows who they are, and built a playlist of similar artists for me. They seem to have a more foreign music than other services I've used, but I couldn't tell you if it's at all comprehensive.